


The Hole In The Sky

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-30
Updated: 2006-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:24:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What no man can hold, no man can take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hole In The Sky

**(proemium)**

He wears the scarf around his neck for over two months, trailing down over his chest; it lies under his Armani suits and his tighter, Babylon gear. It’s his own version of a medieval hair shirt, only, of course, instead of rough ends of horsehair working their way into spiritual, mortified flesh, the scarf is light as air, the yield of mulberry trees and small, blind worms spinning in darkness. They flogged themselves, the hair shirt-wearing mystics in their cells and oratories, but Brian’s never been into kinky leather crap. He’s far too pretty for a bear, and the idea of letting some frustrated idiot with a dead-end office job and delusions of dominance mark – possibly _ruin_ \- the smooth skin of his back has somehow never appealed.

The silk’s rougher in places, large patches of stiffened brown that don’t graze his skin. Brian can still see them bloom brilliant vital red against the snow of the scarf, wet and yielding.

He tries not to think about that, about Justin’s face bruised and insensate, lips parted, skull parted – but that’s what wearing the fucking scarf is all about, isn’t it? It’s pathetic, really fucking _pathetic_ , and he still can’t believe that it’s able to hurt him this much.

  
 **(the tighter you hold, the more it slips)**

Brian’s dad was never the play-catch-in-the-backyard type. Sometimes, when he was home, and mostly sober, and in a good mood – a conjunction rarer than the blue and waxing moon – he tried to be.

Brian tried. His fumbles earned clips around the ear and exhortations to _stop being a pansy and learn to throw, godammit,_ Claire _could do better._ He wasn’t sure, finally, if he ended up playing badly to piss his dad off, or if he genuinely was that bad.

Trying didn’t earn him a _well done, sonny boy._ He didn’t hear too many of those until after he finished college, until he started at bringing home more in a week than his dad made in a month.

Brian hates red-blooded sports, and not even tight uniforms stretched over muscular backsides and baring sculpted thighs and biceps have ever been able to reconcile him to them.

  
 **(you’re only a boy)**

The boy is fresh and pale in the light of the streetlamp, eyes wide; a little lamb who’s lost his shepherd, an seraph on the brink of Fall. Brian wonders whether he’s a virgin.

His skin tastes sharp with sweat, slightly sweet with soap. Brian draws his tongue down the cleave of the boy’s spine, licking down his vertebrae until he reaches the cleft of his ass. The boy makes a satisfying noise, helpless and shocked, and Brian lets his lips curl into a smirk.

Then the boy is like a clinging limpet that Brian just can’t brush off. Brian doesn’t know what he did to deserve his very own stalker – he knows he’s hot, but what the fuck did he ever do to make anyone think he’s _boyfriend material?_

Justin is fucking insidious. Brian doesn’t know why he keeps breaking his rule for him; it’s not like he’s anything out of the ordinary. It’s not like Brian hasn’t had him. The kid has a nice smile, and it transforms his whole face with a brigh sudden flare of happiness, but that's not enough.

Brian carries that smile burnt onto the inside of his eyelids for months after, when he's not seeing Justin’s fair hair clotting with blood or the endless grey of the floor in the hospital corridor.

  
 **(loyaltie me lie)**

Michael’s on his stomach, frowning at the algebra homework spread out before him, incomprehensible as mystical incantations in hieratic. “I hate Mr Edgars. The man is _evil_ , Brian.”

Brian smirks at him. "He’s no more twisted and sadistic than any other math teacher. The profession attracts sad perverts who get excited by scatter graphs and don’t get laid. Ever.” He’s staring at Michael’s ceiling, eyes tracing the spiderwebbing cracks, but when Michael doesn’t respond, Brian turns his head, glances at the curve of Mikey’s shoulders, the licks of dark hair curling on the back of his neck.

Michael looks back at him, dark eyes steady and grin fading, and the look goes on too long. Brian remembers his own voice hissing _I’ll have to take care of it_ , his bangs damp and sticking to his forehead as he unzips Mikey’s fly, and stares back up at the ceiling.

He knows – he can just fucking tell, call it his Spidey-sense (like Mikey would), his Mikey-sense – he knows that Michael’s face has probably fallen, that he’s staring in puzzlement, maybe frowning, at Brian’s profile.

Michael doesn’t get it.

Brian’s glad Deb interrupted them. Okay, flameouts and blue balls fucking _suck_ , but Michael is his best friend. Brian can’t imagine a future where Michael’s not around, going on about the latest DC reboot or Marvel continuity fuck-up, _I can’t believe that they brought Jean Gray back from the dead again,_ brown eyes glowing as he works himself into a fit of excitement. Brian will be there to say _God, you’re pathetic._ When they’re finally legal, he wants to go out and hit clubs and bars with Michael, and only partly because he’ll look hotter in comparison. He wants to be able to bitch to someone who’ll take his side because fuck knows – not to get to disgustingly sentimental, all that crap – no one else will.

Sex is sex is sex, and it’s really fucking good. But Brian already knows that you can get sex from anyone (look at his dad, the endless stream of women he goes through) and that love is complete bullshit. He doesn’t want to get married and have wrinkled pink children so there’s no need for that sort of fucked-up lie. When you mix sex up with _liking_ and _loving_ , it all ends in divorce, misery, bottles of gin; hurt feelings and hatred.

He wants Mikey to stick around, so he ignores that look, and the ones that follow, and brushes off Michael’s hands if they linger too long.

  
 **(learning curve)**

Brian waits in the middle of the sidewalk; he frowns with concern as Justin slowly walks towards him; he draws his brows together and tells him come on, just a little closer, you can do it.

Hesitantly, chin tucked down, pushed around by the crowd, but he does it. (Brian cranes his head to keep him in sight through the mass of people). Finally, he’s in arm’s reach, then closer, wrapping his arms tightly around Brian’s neck. Brian slides his arms around Justin's hips and lets him press close against his chest. He imagines he can hear Justin’s heart beating fast against his, through his clothing, through the delicate cage of his ribs. Brian leans in and kisses him, and the sun is bright.

Justin’s mother stood in his home and said to him: “I want you to take my son.”

Justin is hesitant under his hands. Brian, on the second attempt, touches him softly, slowly, gently; like it’s the first time. Only the first time, he wanted to give the boy a fuck he’d never forget, and not incidentally enjoy himself thoroughly in the process. This, though – this is for Justin.

 _Touch him. Help him be touched._

It’s not at all like the first time. _You’re the one he trusts._ Brian runs soothing fingers along Justin’s side, kisses the curve of his neck; Justin reaches over his own shoulder to cup Brian’s jaw and pull him in for a kiss.

-

Justin says, “Why am I here? If I hadn’t got bashed in the head would I even be here?” Brian can’t answer. No, yes, yes, no.

  
 **(the girl next door)**

Brian meets Lindsey in college. He immediately classifies her as an obviously frigid, spoiled princess; honey-blond hair past her shoulders, pastel clothing, and a nice rack if you’re into that sort of thing. Brian isn’t.

She proves not to be so easily defined.

They get into an argument in Western Civ.; Lindsey matches him point for point, and refuses to back down, even when he gets irritable and dismisses her opinion on the grounds that she couldn’t possibly be that much of a fucking stupid barbie doll. Lindsey’s mouth quivers for a fraction of a second, wounded-doe eyes, before lifting her chin and glaring back at him. He gets reprimanded by the T.A., but it’s worth it. He offers to buy her a coffee afterwards, although he maintains he doesn’t bother with pointless shit like penitence. She gives him a freezing glare and turns him down flat. They use the next four classes as a debate forum, passion against cynicism, and piss off everyone until they join forces against an obviously idiotic statement made by a stubborn classmate.

After that, they’re mostly on friendly terms. They get stoned together one night and for some reason, Brian becomes convinced that he should give snatch a shot. They’re laughing because it’s really good weed, and everything is soft-focus and slippery and fucking _easy,_ and afterwards Brian has never been more certain that he’s a faggot down to his very marrow, or more grateful for all the willing ass to be found at Babylon.

It takes Lindsey a few years to realise that she’s into girls; until Melanie, who Brian loathes at first sight, a passion returned with interest. Lindsey leaves behind her pastels and her parents’ money and cuts off her long hair. Brian rubs his knuckles over the short regrowth on her scalp and makes withering comments about hedgehogs and bull dykes and asks if she plans to try to wrestle Melanie for ownership of the strap-on.

Lindsey frowns at him. “Won’t you grow up?” She touches his cheek. “You could find someone too, Brian. You can’t keep fucking around like a teenager forever, you know.”

“You can be my Wendy,” Brian snaps, and tugs at the remains of her blonde hair in mostly gentle emphasis.

  
 **(stay)**

Justin looks back at him, face an unformed question, as if there’s anything Brian’s going to say. _Last chance to fall to your knees and give me a dozen pretty red roses and tell me you love me forever and ever a-fucking-men. Tell me to stay._

Brian’s not a fucking lesbian, and Justin’s free to leave whenever he wants. It still feels like someone’s shoved a hook up under his ribcage and _jerked_ ; and the sight of Justin kissing the fiddler in the middle of the dance floor, pale hair alternating between blue and gold with the lights – it fucking _hurt_. And it shouldn’t. Brian doesn’t want or need a boyfriend. He doesn’t.

So he stands there still as Justin’s face shuts - substitutes Rage’s mask for another, shooting him a wide-eyed stare that he can take any way he fucking likes – watches Justin take the little fiddler’s hand and pull him away, watches them – isn’t young love so fucking sweet? – be swallowed up by the crowd.

He can feel people watching him, shock and pity and satisfaction in their eyes. Brian prefers the satisfaction to the pity; pity is the last fucking thing he wants. The hook’s still jerking around in his guts, and he decides to find someone to swallow _him_ down. Maybe on the dance floor, fuck the back room – if people want to stare, he’ll give them a show.

  
 **(ave maria)**

Every time Brian smells gin, he thinks of his mother; even once he’s past thirty and therefore has one foot in the grave, and should be long past such tender childhood reminiscences.

He doesn’t have too many of those.

Kids love their mothers, at least at first. It’s some sort of preconditioning passed down with their milk; some childish imprinting on this being, this seemingly infallible protector of a person able to do anything.

Brian didn’t keep that illusion long. His mother started drinking heavily a few years after Claire was born, the genteel sips of spirits and illicit glasses of wine escalating, as his father’s infidelities increased. Brian could hear them fighting through his bedroom walls, the broken staccato of her alto raised in counterpoint to roaring bass.

Brian liked bright colours. He liked drawing and he liked writing clever little stories to please his teacher, to take home and please his mother. His report cards said things like _Brian is a creative little boy and a joy to teach_ and later _Brian is obviously intelligent, if somewhat cheeky_ and then _Brian is a clever child who is badly in need of discipline_ when he was ten.

His father hadn’t taken that report card particularly well, nor Brian’s responses to his questions. It wasn’t the first time he had hit him, just a glancing blow, _there, how’s that for discipline_ , but it was the first time his mother hadn’t interfered. Brian glared over at her, his breath coming hard through his nose and his cheek smarting crimson, to see her lips moving in silent self-involved prayer, eyes shut.

  
 **(friendship bracelets)**

Brian’s knuckles were bruised and swollen for nearly a week; it’d been a while since he punched someone straight in the face, and he’d forgotten how much it fucking hurt.

The shock on everyone’s faces – Deb yelling _Michael, shit, fucking animal hit my kid_ – Mikey’s betrayed disbelief. Justin’s steady eyes. Still worth it.

 _He used you and he took from you and he never gave back a thing! And this is the thanks you get for saving his life. If you ask me it wasn’t worth it, you might as well just left him lying there –_

No. Fuck Michael.

He can see Justin sweet and golden in blue, clutching the fiddler’s arm and introducing him to his friends – Brian’s friends.

 _By the way, I hope you get what you want._ He meant that, and means it. It surprises him how much he means it; selfless benevolence is hardly his forte.

Justin wants declarations of love and handholding, snuggling and endless, everyday monogamy. Brian can’t think of anything he wants less. He can’t think of anything that fills him with more claustrophobic terror, unless it’s being married to a woman, driving a minivan and having 2.4 children.

He flexes his hand, tendons shifting under the skin, swollen knuckles a protest. He still wishes it was the violinist’s jaw his fist had connected with violently; _still_ wishes it was Ethan glaring at him from the floor.

  
 **(dynamic duo)**

Brian meets Michael in sixth grade; a small dark-haired kid with his head buried in a comic, ignoring the world around him, which Brian decides is a sign of good taste as he scopes out the rest of the students. He slides his tray next to the kid’s and tugs his comic out of his grasp.

The kid’s head comes up then, all right; furious dark eyes in a frightened face. “Can you give that back, please?” he asks, carefully polite, and Brian smiles sweetly at him, flicking briefly through the pages of the latest Astroman.

“Sure,” he shrugs. “It’s no great loss.”

The kid squares his shoulders and looks for a second like he’s going to say something, then obviously thinks better of it. Brian decides to continue, goad; “ _Aquaman_ could take Astroman in a fight.”

The kid’s mouth drops open and he starts to splutter in outrage, so Brian hands him back his precious comic and defuses the imminent explosion with a peace token. “I like Green Lantern. I was _kidding._ I’m Brian.”

The kid, whose name turns out to be Michael, starts to talk impossibly fast about various superheroes, which Brian finds vaguely entertaining and vastly pathetic. He goes home with him after school; his mom is fucking scary, but after she raps his knuckles with a spoon she gives him a cookie.

  
 **(the limitations of a language)**

“He already has a boyfriend!” Michael shouted.

“You do?” Hunter asked, sounding surprised and painfully young.

“In a non defined, non-conventional way, yeah.”

When Brian has to define his relationship with Justin to the horse-faced rentboy Mikey’s playing daddy to, it’s strangely easy; he’s ready to go further than _the guy I fuck more than once._ Justin is the only guy who gets double-dipped, but it's more than that, and has been since he sat down in front of Brian, defiant, and said _I think you should take me back_ – at least, that’s as early as Brian will admit to.

He has a non-defined, unconventional boyfriend. He can’t deny it and doesn’t particularly want to.

They don’t tell each other that they love each other; once upon a time, Justin was as free with his _Iloveyous_ as his smiles, but he grew up. The fiddler burnt it out of him, fucking him over with every stroke of his bow.

Brian tries to persuade Justin to go back to school. There’s a stack of Rage copies stashed in the bottom of a cupboard, although if anyone ever questions him about it, Brian will claim vanity, because it’s not every guy who’s hot enough and fabulous enough to have a whole comic devoted to how fucking awesome he is.

Justin draws Rage saving citizens of Gayopolis from bashers and fates worse than death. He draws Rage larger than life, a brave and impossibly handsome superhero who fights the queer fight and never messes up his hair.

Brian knows exactly when to order him to _put down the pencil and stop fucking drawing_ before Justin starts to wince, to push blindly ahead once his precision starts to slip and his knuckles turn bone white and the death grip he’s maintaining makes his hand wracked with cramp.

Justin makes Brian eat something other than Chinese takeout every now and then. He’s not the best cook; he occasionally scorches whatever he’s trying to concoct, or adds too much spice, or not enough. Brian complains if he’s feeling bitchy, but he eats it.

Brian doesn’t say _you’re so pathetic_ or roll his eyes and turn away when Justin tells him that he can’t sell the loft because it’s where they made love for the first time. He merely tells him _that wasn’t love; I just gave you a rim job and fucked your brains out_ and kisses Justin kindly when he remains adamant.

Justin makes Brian soup when the chemo’s leeched the energy from him, when he feels so ill he doesn’t give a fuck if the ball cancer kills him or not. He comes back when Brian throws him out, and he glares at Brian until he swallows every. single. mouthful. He helps Brian stagger to the bathroom to throw up and doesn’t say a word; he puts damp cloths on Brian’s forehead.

Brian presses kisses as well as bites to the slopes of Justin’s shoulders when they fuck, devotes his mouth to charting the back of Justin’s neck. Justin kisses his way down Brian’s ribcage and makes love to him with his tongue. They sleep tangled together, Justin pressed to Brian’s back or against his chest, Brian’s arm draped loosely over him.

It works.

They don’t bother with words.

The closest Brian finally brings himself to verbal expression is to bitch about the inconvenience of Justin having to borrow his socks and not being around to wash his back, and to say, carefully light, _as for the times when you’re not around, I wouldn’t particularly mind it if you were._

Justin lowers his eyes, biting at his lips, and Brian thinks,

 _oh,_

 _shit._

  
 **(fathers and sons)**

Gus is the smallest creature Brian can imagine. He holds his tiny pink son curled in his hands, exhausted from the effort of being born, with the same care one holds an eggshell, a piece of brilliant Venetian glass.

 _tick_

He lounges on Lindsey’s floor with Gus, chewing upon his own small fist, arranged carefully across his chest. Melanie snaps at him to be careful, but Gus is safe where he is.

 _tick_

Gus is older, the curve of his skull round and solid as a cannonball. He’s going to be as handsome – well, almost - as his old man one day. Brian teaches him the _proper_ way to play with trains, the interesting way, with crashes and explosions and bent railway tracks.

 _tick_

Lindsey and Melanie ask for his blessing.

 _tick_

Brian takes Gus to the park. It’s a fine, beautiful winter day, cold and dry, and the park is full of swaddled, raucous children and their doting parents. Brian instructs his son to stop eating the sand in the sandbox, and feels nauseatingly connected to the great cycle of breederdom.

To rid himself of the taint, he drags him Gus over to the swings and uses a greater force in his pushes than the Munchers would ever employ. Gus squeals with glee and kicks his feet triumphantly as he soars towards the pale sky, and Brian figures he’s doing okay.

He buys Gus an ice cream, which promptly and literally bites the dust. There is ice cream on Brian’s Italian leather shoe, and Gus becomes hot and red in the face and starts to howl.

Brian closes his eyes and counts very, very slowly to ten. Then he grabs some napkins and wipes the crap off his shoe, and buys Gus two scoops, which shuts him up. When he drops him back at his mommies’, Gus is singing loudly and bouncing wildly, and Melanie glares at Brian and says bitterly “You fed him sugar on _purpose_ , didn’t you?” Gus chooses this moment to throw up on the carpet, in one of the only places free of taped-up moving boxes.

Brian is a proud father.

 _tick_

He kisses Gus’s forehead and says “Goodbye, son.”

  
 **(the tighter you hold, the more it slips: reprise)**

Brian wakes up, and he is alone.

The loft is empty.

Half his drawers are empty.

In the wardrobe, there are two tuxedos, worn just once. There’s a small velvet jeweller’s box in the pocket of the larger suit; in the other pocket, the key to a place called Brighton, the Shangri-la that wasn’t.

Brian showers. He strips the sheets ruthlessly from the bed, and does not bring them to his face. He finds an old t-shirt, too small for his own shoulders, fallen down the crack between wall and mattress. He swears with vicious feeling and kicks the bed.

Sometimes sacrifice _is_ love.

Sometimes he’s not sure if he drove Justin away on purpose, to be all he can be; sometimes Brian thinks that Justin agreed to leave because Brian could never be what he wanted, even when he actually _tried_ , and after years of wilful blindness, Justin opened his eyes.

It’s familiar. Brian thought he’d learnt that lesson long ago ( _if you hold something tight, it slips through the net of your fingers like water. If you don’t let yourself care too much, no one can take it from you_ ). He was stupid, fucking stupid; he let himself forget.

  
 **(back forth sideways)**

A boy walks down a strange street in the darkness. All around him is the chaotic gaiety of a strange world; he studies it with the measuring eyes of an anthropologist, with the hungry eyes of a little boy pressed up against the glass of a sweet shop window. It’s alien and beautiful and frightening, and he wants to be part of it so badly he feels sick.

  
 **(the phases of the moon)**

Brian makes it a full month before he gives in and let his fingers dial the familiar number.

Justin’s voice comes through slightly breathless; “Justin Taylor speaking. Hello?”

Brian thinks of the rings stashed in the back of the wardrobe, and how fucking stupid he was to let love get in the way of fucking, to talk about fucking _marriage._ He’d given the kiss of death himself, rushing ahead despite the fact that he knew, knew where marriage ultimately leads. He thinks about Justin in New York, about smears of paint on his cheekbones, his chin, marking his fingers and wrists. He doesn’t think about backing Justin into the shower, rubbing at the paint with soapy fingers until it starts to disappear. He also doesn’t think about skipping the shower and pinning Justin to the floor, letting the oil paints transfer themselves onto his skin, until they’re both stained, a human rainbow.

He doesn’t reply, just lies back on his expensive sheets on his empty bed and listens to Justin’s repeated _Hello? Hello, anyone there?_ taper off; he closes his eyes to the sound of Justin’s breathing.

“Brian?” Justin asks finally, voice soft and hesitant. It’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s unsure, the voice that Brian heard too fucking much of when he was sick. A pussy-footing, cotton-wool tone, when Brian likes Justin passionate and loud.

“Yeah,” Brian says at last, soft as well. “I hope I didn’t wake you. Wrong number.” He sets the receiver down with a dull _click_ , rubbing a hand tiredly over his forehead.

The phone rings, wasp-irritable, and Brian picks it up almost before he remembers that Justin can be a tenacious little fucker - god, like he could forget. “Kinney,” he says shortly. “This is a bad time.”

“I miss you,” Justin says immediately, rushed and definitely breathless. “I miss you all the time. Even when you do crazy stalker things like call me up and lurk silently on the line. God, you’re weird.”

Brian smiles briefly, despite himself. “I told you, it was a wrong number.”

“Sure,” Justin replies, voice laden with sarcasm and an undercurrent of laughter. Boy thinks something’s _funny._ “I’m glad you did. Brian –”

“I can’t do this,” Brian says abruptly, more raw than he means to. His eyes are shut.

Justin is silent. “Is that your way of saying you miss me, too?” He’s trying for light, but it hangs in the air like steam.

“If by ‘miss’ you mean ‘keep picking up blond twinks to take home and fuck’, maybe,” Brian snaps.

“You could come and visit,” Justin says carefully. “See the sights. You don’t have to stay with me. Unless you want to, and you don’t mind the smell of turpentine too much.” He pauses. “I know you’ve always loved New York.”

“Are you a big success?” Brian asks quietly. “Is every critic singing your praises? Are you the next Pollock?”

“Not yet,” Justin says with a laugh. “Give me time.”

“I have,” Brian says seriously. “I am giving you time.”

“You should come,” Justin tells him.

  
 **and end scene**

The scarf is in its box, a beautiful present to himself tied up with black satin ribbons. This is what he is; he can drop a month’s pay check on obscenely expensive designer accessories, spoil himself stupid if he wants to. Brian is the only thing that Brian should care about, and that’s never going to change.

It’s soft and glorious when he draws it out, and it makes love to his fingertips and to the tender skin of his throat. He throws it up in the air like a feather for the sheer pleasure of watching it lazily float back down towards him.

Brian strips down to his pants and pulls the scarf loosely around his neck, eyes closing at the pleasure. He contemplates, briefly, jerking off with it, the touch of heaven against his dick.

There are better uses he could put it to. Plan A it is.

Brian can do whatever the fuck he wants. He’s Brian Fucking Kinney, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone or anything but himself. Absolutely.


End file.
